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Topic: Wave warnings? (Read 892 times)

I put wave warning on long so I have advanced knowledge of it, but it does nothing. They just show up on my planets out of nowhere and it's really annoying because I might be doing something like going on my way to free the Dyson sphere and then a wave shows up, which results in many possible outcomes. a. I get my fleet back in time, but the wave was already dealt with, making the trek back useless while the Dyson sphere reinforces its "planets" (destroyed all AI ships and turrets)b. I get my fleet back in time, turns out the wave was bigger than expected, turns out fine due to fleet being there.c. I free the Dyson sphere and the guardians trickle into my planet being attacked. Everything is fine.d. I free the Dyson sphere, but it becomes "passive aggressive" and doesn't help my planet.e. My fleet gets caught by enemies and my defenses get owned.This is also exacerbated by the enemy to all Dyson guardians trickling into my other planets, causing me to have to deploy some forces there as well. I'm really considering turning off direct waves because this is just that frustrating to me.

« Last Edit: April 25, 2018, 09:46:59 PM by Ovalcircle1 »

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We used to give wave warnings, but that was removed by the UI rework. There was some discussion between Eric and Chris for having announcements of some sort, but I'm not sure where that wound up. I don't think this is a Keith thing, this is a UI thing. Keith may rework how waves are sent and calculated, but the UI to display the warnings needs to exist first for it to be useful.

We used to give wave warnings, but that was removed by the UI rework. There was some discussion between Eric and Chris for having announcements of some sort, but I'm not sure where that wound up. I don't think this is a Keith thing, this is a UI thing. Keith may rework how waves are sent and calculated, but the UI to display the warnings needs to exist first for it to be useful.

I put all the AI factions on 3, Human resistance and Dyson Sphere on 10 and managed to re-roll a bunch of times until I got a lucky spawn with it. And I didn't mean that the Dyson sphere had anything to do with the waves or anything. I meant that with the wave warnings off, freeing it was more of a hassle than it should have been. Unless I'm misinterpreting your words.

When you say the Dyson Sphere becomes passive aggressive, what do you mean? What "should" be happening is that the Dyson Sphere ships should wander around the galaxy, but should privilege your planets once you free it, and should defend any planets they are on if the AI attacks. Is this not happening? I wouldn't be surprised if there are issues; this isn't very well tested code.

Oh, did I accidentally remove the wave warnings? Well, that would be my bad then -- I thought they were still there, but using an old-style thing. I guess that explains why I never see them. Anyhow, there are definitely designs for wave warnings coming up in the next 1.5 months.

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The old mechanism was "Once you hit the Wave Warning Threshold, you got a timer in the Threat portion of the Resource bar. Hovering the timer would tell you the amount of incoming ships and the planet it was heading to"

When you say the Dyson Sphere becomes passive aggressive, what do you mean? What "should" be happening is that the Dyson Sphere ships should wander around the galaxy, but should privilege your planets once you free it, and should defend any planets they are on if the AI attacks. Is this not happening? I wouldn't be surprised if there are issues; this isn't very well tested code.

I'm sorry. This is a mistake on my part. I was making a joke that the Dyson ships take their time getting to the destination or feel like focusing on some AI ships they happen to spot on the way there, which is "helping" me but not the way I wanted it to.

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Yes, we have a design ready for wave warnings, it just hasn't been implemented yet. Are you interested in providing feedback? If so, I'll post the details here.

Who are you talking to? I don't mean to be rude, just that when different people have a conversation on a forum and then someone says "you", considering you could mean singular or plural, I find it hard to tell just who you're talking to. If you're talking to me, sure. If not, then ignore this whole post.

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Yeah, was referring to you (Ovalcircle1), should have mentioned you by name, sorry. Chris and Badger have already seen them but of course you wouldn't know that. :-)

Here goes:

Basically, every time you have a wave incoming, or have enemy and allied ships/structures (not including scouts) on a planet, a tag for that entity shows up. Newest on the right, oldest on the left. If it's a wave, it gives you a timer until the wave launches and the strength of the waves. If you mouse over it you see the target planet (and that planet even highlights on the galaxy map). Double-clicking zooms/jumps to the target planet. Once it arrives on planet (or if this is just an battle that has nothing to do with a wave) instead of the timer you get allied/enemy strengths displayed (and the icon changes depending on if it is a defensive battle or an offensive one). This should help you keep track of multiple combats/waves easily. It's similar to the ticker from Paradox grand strategy games, but focused on the core warning/event of AIW.

Suggestions:1. For the color coded waves, if you're going that way, I think they should be colored by whoever is doing the attacking. So if the player is gold, make the icon gold. If the AI is blue, make the icon blue. Etc. That way one can glance at it and know if its a defense or attack. I was thinking that it should be colored by the planet owner, but then if a friendly minor faction such as the Dyson sphere or hacked Nanocaust attacks the AI, it doesn't really show who's doing the attacking. Honestly, I'm torn between the two ideas because the tool-tip goes more in depth with the info.

2. Maybe have it only show for events that that the enemy has a considerable amount of strength compared to your forces? I don't want this showing up every time a lone Dyson Guardian or random enemy ship travels to one of my planets every 30 seconds that has a billion strength (the planet has the strength) but might take a little while to kill it because it sprinted to a resource node in the middle of nowhere. On the flip side, if you bring a group of ships to deepstrike the AI say, 4 planets deep, and some ships get caught on the planets along the way, that's 4 boxes that will take up the top of the screen.

3. For the dismiss pop-up, I would have to gather my thoughts on this. I say no dismiss, but I have to figure out what I'm trying to say and put it into words.

4. I notice turret strength is not in the tool-tip. That would certainly help. Going by the information in the tool-tip picture, you are definitely going to lose that planet. But you could have 5k strength of turrets (I'm pulling numbers out of a hat here), meaning the attack isn't the curbstomp it says it is. Maybe have "Turrets 5k (str icon)" as a separate line so you can tell what strength is where.

5. I know bugs will be inevitably be present, but you (or whoever) should make sure that the event goes away if enemy ships are converted to your side (Dyson freed while its guardians are on your planet).

6. Other events that should be a pop up like the Resistance and Marauders: AI has recaptured (planet name). Dyson sphere is now Friendly, hostile to all, or has been provoked (hostile to you). Nanocaust Hive is now friendly or has been hacked. Golem/Flagship repaired on (planet name).

Questions:1. What if the planetary controller is or becomes neutral during a event? How would that affect the info displayed? Who's attacking and who's defending?

2. What is an AI Governor?

« Last Edit: April 25, 2018, 09:51:22 PM by Ovalcircle1 »

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1. For the color coded waves, if you're going that way, I think they should be colored by whoever is doing the attacking. So if the player is gold, make the icon gold. If the AI is blue, make the icon blue. Etc. That way one can glance at it and know if its a defense or attack. I was thinking that it should be colored by the planet owner, but then if a friendly minor faction such as the Dyson sphere or hacked Nanocaust attacks the AI, it doesn't really show who's doing the attacking. Honestly, I'm torn between the two ideas because the tool-tip goes more in depth with the info.

I like that, but if two different forces are attacking the same planet, how should it be colored? Maybe instead color it by whoever owns the planetary controller to keep it simple?

2. Maybe have it only show for events that that the enemy has a considerable amount of strength compared to your forces? I don't want this showing up every time a lone Dyson Guardian or random enemy ship travels to one of my planets every 30 seconds that has a billion strength (the planet has the strength) but might take a little while to kill it because it sprinted to a resource node in the middle of nowhere. On the flip side, if you bring a group of ships to deepstrike the AI say, 4 planets deep, and some ships get caught on the planets along the way, that's 4 boxes that will take up the top of the screen.

Oh, I like this idea, except what if I do want to know about the little stuff because... I dunno I want to know where some of my deep striking forces went, or I want to know why one of my planets goes crazy every few minutes. Maybe have a tag for all the "minor" conflicts show up that you have to mouse over to see all of them? But then you still have the one ship attacking intermittently problem where that tag shows up and goes away repeatedly. Hrm....

3. For the dismiss pop-up, I would have to gather my thoughts on this. I say no dismiss, but I have to figure out what I'm trying to say and put it into words.

Please do. I'm figuring when the event is over, the tag goes away automatically (or after a few seconds), but there may be times in a multiplayer game where there's just too much noise and I need to dismiss an ally's attack/defense? Hrm, or maybe a better solution would be to put a setting in the player menu that lets you mute/show battle/wave tags for allies on a per-ally basis? Then right-click can be used to quickly move ships to a planet's defense?

4. I notice turret strength is not in the tool-tip. That would certainly help. Going by the information in the tool-tip picture, you are definitely going to lose that planet. But you could have 5k strength of turrets (I'm pulling numbers out of a hat here), meaning the attack isn't the curbstomp it says it is. Maybe have "Turrets 5k (str icon)" as a separate line so you can tell what strength is where.

I think I originally intended it to include all strength, including turrets, but when I was building my mockup, my imagined scenario didn't have any turrets (they were global cap then) defending the planet, but it would have confused Chris like that, so good point and I need to change the mockup.

I don't know how I feel about having turrets on a separate line with separate strength. I don't want people to have to do addition to figure out if it is enough... but you're right that 1k strength of turrets isn't quite the same thing as 1k strength of mobile military.

5. I know bugs will be inevitably be present, but you (or whoever) should make sure that the event goes away if enemy ships are converted to your side (Dyson freed while its guardians are on your planet).

6. Other events that should be a pop up like the Resistance and Marauders: AI has recaptured (planet name). Dyson sphere is now Friendly, hostile to all, or has been provoked (hostile to you). Nanocaust Hive is now friendly or has been hacked. Golem/Flagship repaired on (planet name).

Good idea to have minor-faction related tags show up. This means this needs to have some way for modders to easily add event calls when they make their own factions. I don't want players to be overwhelmed with too many tags, but I think they'll be useful.

1. What if the planetary controller is or becomes neutral during a event? How would that affect the info displayed? Who's attacking and who's defending?

Good point, especially if we are coloring the icon based on planetary controller owner. Maybe the tag should "remember" the event it was until it is cleared, or would it be more useful if it turned into a "destroyed planetary controller" or "battle over neutral territory" event?

Not sure how this is changing with the pivot, but in AIWC you had two AIs, each with their own king unit, planets, and strategies, resources for the AIs were created independently based on AIP and divided up between them. And there was this "threatfleet" kind of entity and special forces entity.

In AIW2 we were dividing those up so players had more control, and possibly more (or less) of each category. At the top of the good chain was the "AI Overlord" which produced the resources, owned the king unit(s) and divided the resources up to its governors. We were starting off with the idea that there was only one overlord, and there was just a setting that decided how many king units it had. Theoretically we could add multiple overlords later and even have AI factions fighting against eachother (much later on). Under the overlord were the governors, which were like the two AIs for AIWC, only there could be 1... or there could be as many as 1 per AI planet or anything in between. You could have diversity as you moved through the galaxy and fought against the various governors with their different strategies and build preferences. Then the special forces became the warden fleet(s) (which you could have 0 through many of) and the threatfleet became the hunter fleet(s) (which you could also have 0 through many of).

It was a cool idea, but hadn't been implemented yet (or maybe just the interface hadn't been implemented yet). With the pivot back to AIWC I am not sure where that is headed. Conceptually it's the same as AIWC, just changing who owns the king units and allowing you to have various numbers of each class of entity.

1. I agree that the icon for the wave should be colored for the defender. That way you can see if it's something you need to look at right now or something you can glance at and be like "Oh, the AI is getting attacked by some minor faction. Good for me." You're probably going to look at the tooltip anyway out of curiosity, but, ¯\_(?)_/¯. (Looks like the middle of the shrug text isn't compatible with this site.)

2. For the planetary controller turning neutral, I agree that the icon should stay the same, as there are voice lines to tell you that you lost control of a planet. Also related to this is if the planet itself begins as neutral when a big battle happens between factions ( To free the Dyson Planet it needs to be neutral.) Is there an color for a Neutral controller? What if the AI attacks? However, the planet name in the Galaxy map is color coded for the Dyson Sphere. What color icon should it be then? Should the Planet color and Icon for the wave be the same? Ex. If you have a controller on a planet that was originally taken by the friendly Nanocaust and the planet name is the color of the minor faction, what should take priority? The controller or the Planet name?

3. I do think turrets should have a separate line for their strength. Let's go by this example. AI is attacking with 4k strength. You have ships there that total 1.3k strength. You also have turrets there for 5k strength. That equals 6.3k strength for you. Simple math. Only one decimal point. Plus, if you really need help adding, the mini square at the top will give you the total strength. If you have allies, you do need to tally it up but you can look at the tool tip for a few seconds and see how much of an impact they have. Plus the mini-box totals up everything on the planet.

4. One thing that I really want to make sure gets in the discussion that I didn't mention earlier. Please make it so the wave counters at the top aren't all the way at the top, have a little room for scrolling the screen. I can already see myself moving the screen using the map edge and having all these tooltips flying in my face.

5. As for the dismissing, I think that should wait until what exactly triggers an event, such as the lone ships trickling in or deepstriking and having ships scattered all over the place. I think that should come first before the dismissing. However I will give my stance as it is now. I don't think they should be dismissed because they are crucial information that is important the whole time they are. They give how much strength, ships, etc is going on. I will be breaking this thought into 2 parts for you doing the attacking and defending.

a. Attacking. No dismiss because you want to know how much damage is being done to the enemy by a minor faction or the ships you left behind on an AI world so you could hack something. Say something like the Dyson sphere or friendly Nanocaust attacks a planet. You can glance at the box and be like "This should be easy for (insert attacking allied minor faction or your own ships)." However if you dismiss that, you could miss the AI seriously reinforcing that planet to beat back your allies or ships because the Warden fleet just arrived. Now when you give your ships the order to move to the planet via the galaxy map because you thought it was won, you are in for a rude awakening when the warden fleet destroys 3/4 of your fleet, stalling your advance.

b. Defense. I don't know why anybody would want to dismiss the wave warnings when it's going to be attacking one of your planets. Basically the same argument before. Ex. "AI is attacking with 40 fleetships, 2 starships, x strength." You think " This should be easy, it's one of my planets that is not really defended with turrets, I'll deploy some fleetships there to defend." Wave arrives. Surprise! It's heavily armored but low damage fleetships with a (insert starship AI has) and a Parasite starship ( or something that does reclamation damage) .The AI fleetships soaked damage while one starship did a lot of damage and the Parasite starship reclaimed a bunch of stuff. Now because you thought you had it in the bag and clicked it away, you have AI ships running around destroying your planet. Now you'll have to redeploy ships there or build turrets to deal with them. APplies to Cpa's or attacks by the hunter fleet. I know stealth guardians are super fast. What if they appear on your planet before the rest of the AI force arrives? You thought it was in the bag, but lo and behold, if you waited 5 more seconds before you dismissed it then you would have seen that the strength of the AI in the box at the top just skyrocketed. You here the voice line of "Your planet is under attack" but you think it's from the stealth guardians themselves. All of a sudden "You have lost control of a planet." Do'h! Also, misclicking the warning away because right click is also the move command for ships is certain to be a problem for some people.

« Last Edit: April 26, 2018, 02:56:45 PM by Ovalcircle1 »

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2. For the planetary controller turning neutral, I agree that the icon should stay the same, as there are voice lines to tell you that you lost control of a planet. Also related to this is if the planet itself begins as neutral when a big battle happens between factions ( To free the Dyson Planet it needs to be neutral.) Is there an color for a Neutral controller? What if the AI attacks? However, the planet name in the Galaxy map is color coded for the Dyson Sphere. What color icon should it be then? Should the Planet color and Icon for the wave be the same? Ex. If you have a controller on a planet that was originally taken by the friendly Nanocaust and the planet name is the color of the minor faction, what should take priority? The controller or the Planet name?

I think when we start getting into minor factions, there needs to be some way for them to call and override the normal icon. If it's a battle at the Dyson Sphere's planet, we all probably want a cool Dyson Sphere icon. How Chris will implement that... I guess we'll have to see what he thinks about that. For an uncontrolled planet, we can probably reserve a color from the color picker and assign that to uncontrolled planets (probably some shade of gray).

As far as your example, I think I'm missing something here. Whoever owns the controller owns the planet, why would the planet name have a different color than the controller? (or maybe this is a nanocaust mechanic I'm not familiar with)

3. I do think turrets should have a separate line for their strength. Let's go by this example. AI is attacking with 4k strength. You have ships there that total 1.3k strength. You also have turrets there for 5k strength. That equals 6.3k strength for you. Simple math. Only one decimal point. Plus, if you really need help adding, the mini square at the top will give you the total strength. If you have allies, you do need to tally it up but you can look at the tool tip for a few seconds and see how much of an impact they have. Plus the mini-box totals up everything on the planet.

Good point that on the tag itself there's a total there anyway. I still might try to do some kind of sum on the tooltip just for consistency sake, but you're right about it not being necessary.

4. One thing that I really want to make sure gets in the discussion that I didn't mention earlier. Please make it so the wave counters at the top aren't all the way at the top, have a little room for scrolling the screen. I can already see myself moving the screen using the map edge and having all these tooltips flying in my face.

Aesthetically speaking, I like the tags going all the way to the top like the resources bar connects fully to the top. The tags themselves should be as tall or taller than the resources bar is currently, so your mouse would never have to get close to the top of the screen. Do you think that will be a problem? Another idea Chris and I were bouncing around earlier was to make the resource bar 1 row tall and then hang the tags off the bottom of the bar (closer to what you see in Stellaris). We weren't a fan of how that looked in the mockup and it might start to dangle into the play space (especially since these tags show more information on them than just the button icons in Stellaris), but we held that idea in reserve in case this layout didn't work.

And now I realize you weren't worried about accidentally panning, but instead about having the tooltips come up when you are trying to pan. I'll leave the previous paragraph up as a monument to my misunderstanding.

Okay, there's currently that resource bar anchored to the top, do the tooltips from that bar annoy you when you try to edge pan? (admittedly I'm a WASD panner or zoom-panner normally, I haven't edge pannedsince I played League of Legends regularly)

If the tags are going to float away from the top of the screen to leave room for edge panning, what visual design do you think would look good and not just be these floating buttons that don't match up with the resource bar they are next to?

Okay, it sounds like there are some good points to not allowing players to dismiss events (or maybe burying that into some kind of control+right click so people have to be REALLY SURE they want to get rid of them), and then having settings to determine which players (in a MP game) you want to be notified for... and maybe also which minor factions you want to be notified for as well (when you are not involved in the event)? For multiplayer, it makes sense to load that into the MP control panel that's currently slated to be a tab in the chat box. Where would be a good place to change settings on which minor factions you wanted to watch?